Page 48 of My Best Friend's CEO Dad

“Are you okay?” Mom asks, walking up beside me.

“Fine,” I reply.

“Do they really think they’ll come after us?”

Mom uses “they” twice, but she’s unsure who both the “they” are. I haven’t told her everything about the security company or the anti-tech psychos. I wish I didn’t have to drag her into this at all. “It’s better to be safe,” I murmur.

“Huh?” Mom asks.

“I said it’s better to be safe.”

Mom shakes her head. “My hearing is not the best lately. I’ve got eardrops. It’s a buildup of wax, apparently. Ew, right? It should clear within a couple of weeks.”

“Wait.” I almost laugh. “Is that why…”

“Why what?” she says innocently.

“It’s nothing.”

“You’ve said it now, Maci.”

We’re alone in here. Kayla and Finn are in her bedroom. Finn’s sleeping off the booze. Lukas is with Gabriel and the Bright Night guys. I think Mark’s in the bedroom, too, either reading or doing some work. “Is that why you make so much noise when you and Mark…”

Mom gasps. “Do I?”

“Yeah, but it’s only started recently.”

She puts her hand on her head. Her cheeks are red. “Oh, God. Well, yes, yes, that’d be why. Oh, how embarrassing!”

Now, I can’t hold back the laughter. It’s like a release valve letting out all the stress. She grins and playfully slaps my arm, but then she gets serious. “We haven’t talked about you-know-who recently,” she murmurs.

She’s tried speaking about the story I spun her a few times—the lie that I had some steaminess with Kayla’s ex-boyfriend. “Is now really the best time?” I snap.

She leans back, her hand on her chest. Hurt and confusion touch her features. “I just thought… It’s better than sitting around here waiting for something to happen.”

I sigh, then glance down the hallway. “It’s worse than you think, Mom.”

Stop. I haven’t even told Kayla yet, but this is eating me up. It’s worse now we’re all crammed in the same house together. The sun has set, and starlight bounces off the pool’s surface. It’s the same day as the spa, the near sex, and his cock pressed against me. It feels like too much has happened since then for it to be the same day.

“Worse?”

“Better and worse. It depends on your perspective.” I smooth my hands over my stomach.

“Tell me,” she says.

“Not here,” I whisper.

Not anywhere, I should say. I could lie again, but the truth spills out of me when we leave the house and walk to the other side of the pool. I don’t go into detail, but I tell her the bulk of it. I tell her I care about him. “And he cares about me, too. I know it’s nuts. I know he’s older, but Dad was older than you. He was twelve years older. I know that’s not as big of an age gap, but it’s not about the age. It’s about us. It’s about the connection. I swear, Mom, we’d be taking our relationship seriously if it wasn’t for Kayla.”

I wouldn’t just be his maybe-girlfriend then.

Mom watches me with surprising calmness, and then, shockingly, she smiles. “I’m so glad you told me,” she says.

“Wait… do you know?”

“A week ago, Lukas came to the apartment. He was in quite a state. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. He explained what happened. He said he needed me to warn him away. He said he needed me to hate him. He said, as your mother, I had every right, but then I started asking him questions.”

I drop into one of the poolside chairs. All the breath has just been sucked out of me as I try to compute what she just said. “A week ago?” I whisper. This was before we reconnected, before the spa and the almost steaminess. This was when I was trying to make myself believe I could let him go, and I thought he was doing the same.

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